In Other News, Oracle Is Still Expensive

When I see those numbers in Microsoft marketing slides, I sometimes wonder if they can be real, but then I put these numbers together myself. Granted you would get some discounts, but the fact that all of these features are built into SQL Server, should convince you of the value SQL Server offers. Pricing discounts are generally similar between vendors, so that is not really a point of argument. If you are doing a really big Oracle deal you may see a larger upfront discount, but you will still be paying your 23% support fees on that very large list price. (Software Assurance from Microsoft will be around 20%, but from a much lower base) Additionally, several of these features ae available in SQL Server Standard Edition. None of these features are in Oracle’s Standard Edition.

Postgres is a really good database engine, with a rich ecosystem of developers writing code for it. SQL Server on the other hand, is a mature product that has had a large push to support analytic performance and scale.

Additionally, this customer is leveraging the Azure ecosystem as part of their process, and that is only possible via SQL Server’s tight integration with the platform.

This isn’t a direct comparison to help determine in some absolute sense which product is better, but rather looking at a use case from a customer which takes advantage of many of the features in SQL Server.

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